Main menu

Episode 64: Are You There, Women? It’s Me, Internet.

In this mailbag episode we answer listener questions on Star Trek, like “Do you actually like anything about Enterprise?” as well as on general topics like Wonder Woman and the casting of the 13th Doctor.

Related

Post navigation

8 comments for “Episode 64: Are You There, Women? It’s Me, Internet.”

Janet

July 30, 2017 at 2:59 pm

Thanks for using my email! It’s interesting and disturbing that while shipper lenses give Trip a halo effect, they don’t protect T’Pol. Sure, there are people who give them equal blame for what went wrong in their relationship. But when fans pick a bad guy, it’s T’Pol. It’s almost always about what she did to him. Those thoughts don’t fall neatly among gender lines. Some of T’Pol’s harshest critics are (wait for it) women.

As for the comment that shipper wars weren’t that bad back then, David Jerrold shared a story of two militant Spork shippers on Facebook from the fanzine days. They told a 16 year old gay boy he couldn’t write K/S stories because he didn’t understand male homosexuality (an example of womans/straightsplaining). They also trolled anyone who didn’t agree with them, which took a lot more effort back then without the Internet. As long as shipping existed, there has always been crazy people.

As you discuss the use of real people in holodeck episodes, I refer you to the VOY episode where Tuvok’s wife is created for shall we gently say ‘therapeutic’ purposes. In this case, to thine own self be true. Tuvok needs this or he will die, and he must imagine this character is his real wife and yet the holodeck wife will undoubtedly be treated with respect even if her purpose serves, in part, a sexual capacity.

So my question is – when the Doctor on VOY imagines expressing his feelings to Seven, but can only do it on the holodeck – is it creepier to have a romantic relationship with a holofake of a real person than to just have a physical relationship that serves only that purpose and there is no commitment attached?

You might be one of the few who would like TATV:) Spoiler alert: he dies. People who like it for exactly that reason are a small but vocal minority on forums. TATV still would have sucked if it killed someone else but I don’t think it would have got nearly as much backlash.

I love listening to Women at Warp podcasts and look forward to each new one. Just one complaint – I’m always brought up short by things like “Me and Grace…” Do we need a Universal Translator filter for grammar etiquette and/or subject-verb agreement? Klingons might not care, but think of Captain Picard.

It occurs to me that a really interesting special topic would be the sexual ethics of the Holodeck, especially when later Voyager episodes like “Fair Haven” and “Human Error” are taken into consideration. It is made clear repeatedly than the Federation or Starfleet seem not to have rules about reproducing images of private citizens, even coworkers (recall Riker stating in “Hollow Pursuits” that there ought to be a protocol against it, though he admittedly is only saying this because he’s on the receiving end of an unflattering duplication) — the same episode and others seem to also imply that an individual is entitled to no privacy on the Holodeck, that others can stroll in at will.

One can think of Holodeck as the ultimate evolution of safe sex, where a person might practice any kind of sexual fantasy. But then, would a desire to sleep with Mick Jagger be satisfied by someone whom you know to be a Mick Jagger lookalike — much less a realistic simulation of Mick Jagger?

Fun fact (or at least a fact): interviewed by Jeff Greenwald for the book Future Perfect, Brannon Braga describes his Holodeck fantasy using a 50 foot tall woman to practice his gynaecology fetish on a huge scale.

Hey! Long time listener, first time commenter. One thing I’ve noticed in the shift in shipping and fan behavior is that there’s now a sense that fans can “force” or “convince” the showrunners to make their crack ships canon. I’ve seen numerous petitions and tag campaigns to try and make them happen. I think this has been part of the rise in ship wars.
But i also think it has to do with how easy it is to interact with one another. We can reply to meta and theories so much easier and the disagreements grow.

“But i also think it has to do with how easy it is to interact with one another. We can reply to meta and theories so much easier and the disagreements grow.”

Well, in the era of the printed letterzine, fans did a pretty good job of keeping disagreements going if the issue was big enough (e.g., the original “ship” war of K/S versus anti-K/S). But I agree with your observation–with the ability to post all over the Internet with a few keystrokes, nowadays it all spreads with the speed (and often the intensity) of a wildfire. That is one of the negatives of modern fannish communication, to be sure. I’d like to think (or at least hope) that the positives offset it . . . Fingers crossed eh? 🙂